Step 8: Field test the Lite Brite

Step 9: Lite Brite, Lite Brite, turn on the magical colored lights

Bring it places, plug it in, and watch peoples' faces grin ear to ear as they play with a fun toy from their childhoods - only super-sized!***This pro...

I made a Giant Lite Brite for Instructables that has over 1,100 self healing holes and hundreds of multi-colored pegs that go inside and light up. It's an improved upon version of the original toy, at super-human size! Create any picture you can imagine in amazing 30 x 37 peg resolution!

GREAT IDEA!! I would definitely do this however its a bit out of my range of ability. Does anyone know where youcan get those floursecent rods though? they could be useful for a number of things. Also, about how much did this project cost overall?

1. Instead of building the unit out of wood, I stumbled upon a 4x8 sign box, like the ones you see above storefronts. Since this box was designed to hold a 4x8 sheet of plexiglass, it made things quite a bit easier. It has 2100 holes (approx) and is backlit by 200+ LED lights.

2. Totally gave up on trying to block the light with the rubber. Biggest pain ever!

I built two 3'x4' copies. I do appreciate the instructions and it is a neat project but be mindful about a few things if you try to follow the recipe.

1. The pitch for the holes ("holes spaced an inch apart") does not match the file provided to have the rubber cut (exactly 1.04" spacing in both directions). That sounds minor but the mismatch accumulates across the panel until there is no overlap between holes and plus signs in the rubber. 2. Cost is higher than it sounds initially. The rubber is $8/sq ft plus shipping and water jet cutting rubber cost me $205 (12 sheets stacked and cut at once) and I only got that price after calling around extensively. Laser cutting quotes came in as high as $700 because they had to do it four sheets at a time and some refused the job despite my assurances that this rubber does "play nicely with laser cutters". Each peg costs 50 cents plus shipping (from TAP, 1/2 inch rods in 6' lengths) and that assumes you cut them into pegs and polish and/or torch smooth the ends yourself. The fans specified are $50 each (I went cheaper), the glue, the black acrylic is around $100/sheet, the CNC setup and machining is $70/hour, light fixtures $20-30 each x two or three, 4.5" hole saw plus arbor was $50 where I could find it locally, etc. Get a quote for all material, labor and shipping from every vendor in advance if you might be concerned about cost. 3. The *.cdr file in the article isn't accepted by job shops so I download the free CorelDraw X5 demo and saved As DXF. I would have been better to draw my own array of plus signs, or at least check dimensions twice and cut once to avoid issue #1 above.4. Tools: Also, you'll need a good table saw for long grooves and bevels. And a miter saw for chopping all the acrylic rods.5. Peg color selection is limited. In October 2011, I couldn't find half inch extruded acrylic fluorescent rods online in very many fluorescent colors. Yellow does light up as does clear but there is a strong brightness mismatch between fluorescent and not if you try blacklight as lighting instead. Never mind hand-painted blue ones. Some fluorescent blue ones look clear on the side and blue only on the circular tip.6. The 3/4" plywood back makes it a lot heavier. I switched to a thin back panel.

...MAGNETICS!!! If you could find some way of making insulated traces on a bare sheet of metal, you could energize just those and have the metal plate be the ground... then you won't be limited to a grid... OOH... conductive paint on top of regular paint! *runs off to experiment...*

Actually, it hasn't been "done before" What you linked is just a modern version of the lite bright. What they did is a larger version of the lite bright. There is a difference. But I do have to say the modern version of the lite bright is pretty cool. I may end up having a go at both of them and put them in my house. :) I'm a lite bright dork.

hmmm... well, resistor-wise you could solder it together so that it kinda wraps around the led. You're right, how would you figure for that? would it be parallel connections? I'm sure there's a voltage range that will overlap for all the LEDs you're planning on using, so that it falls under the maximum of all, but above the minimum... that, or just limit your color palette.

On a day when totally bored and having access to a junk bin and a case full of old phono plugs/jacks and a sheet of that perforated board, I made a patch panel with a LED & resistor mounted in each plug and wired the sockets in parallel. Down side was that you didn't know what colour you had in hand until you plugged it into the panel. Would have looked better if I had painted it flat black as well .... or taken pictures .. oh well. Its the thought that counts right?

The laser beam itself has a kerf. I'd say that it's only about 1/64", but it's still very much there and lets a very small amount of light through. Cutting at a slight angle would be pretty cool to see if you could miter the joint and reduce the kerf, but since the laser beam head is fixed on that axis, I don't think that it's in the cards using this method.

Awesome. You guys win at life. Forever. I agree with your proposal to add a drilled sheet of steel behind the rubber--it would definitely do the trick as far as holding the rubber in place. However, one should perhaps worry about steel getting really hot. Why not make two of the drilled clear acrylic sheets you used, then use one of those instead of steel? Just an idea. Again, thanks for posting this--utterly illuminating! (No pun intended. Okay, maybe, but a bad one, I concede.) Cheers...

Awesome! I've been working on something like this for a while only smaller but with real lite-brite pegs(hence the "for a while"). My plan was to just use black posterboard but it would be one use. I really want to make a sophisticated picture like the Mona Lisa. My big hang up has been creating a computer program to convert a picture to lite-brite peg colors and spacing. My initial idea was to filter the picture in Photoshop to the peg colors then put it in a program like rasterbator to figure out where the pegs go. I don't know how to use photoshop though so I've had trouble getting help with that. You may be able to do it all in photoshop with some kind of dot filter too. Anyone up for a "make your own lite-brite pattern in Photoshop instructable?

The major cost was the acrylic sheet and rod. I tried to salvage as much of the wood as possible from scrap, and relatively speaking, the lights and fans are inexpensive, but there's no getting around the price of all that acrylic. I don't have an exact number of what we spent on it, but it's on the order of several hundreds of dollars.

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Bio:I've worked for Instructables off and on since 2006 building and documenting just about everything I enjoy doing. I am now the Creative Programs founder and manager for Autodesk and just finished bui...read more »